London Game Career Fair: Day One Report

I got there fast because I thought it opened earlier so I got to wait in line for a while, looking around trying to find the portuguese people that I knew would come. Outside they had a big Ubisoft place, a Warhammer 40.000 Space Marine Tank, a big Motorstorm 2 car and this place that was giving out free energy drinks.

Nuno Ramiro got there early too so we had time to talk about all the weird things that happen in London all the time. CG was the last one to get there and as such she had to wait longer to get in.



As the doors opened we got our blue bracelets (which probably mean "noob" or something) and saw the littlebigplanet tryout booth. Let me tell you the game is exactly what I expected. It is beautiful, polished and most of all: fun. I don't have a PS3 and this game is the only one that makes me desire it. After about an hour of really awesome co-op play and some creation demonstrations, we remembered why we were in the fair for and started looking for the company booths.

There were none in sight, just tryout booths for some of the most expected games of this season. To list a few there were Fallout 3, Mirror's Edge, Prince of Persia Prodigy, Resident Evil 5 (actually most of the copies called it by its japanese name, Biohazard 5), Endwar, Gears of War 2, Killzone 2 and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.


After searching for a bit we found out the fair was even bigger than last year and it had two floors. This first one was full of gaming kiosks and the upper one was the one where the companies were hiring, so we headed there.

What a relief, it was bigger than last year! So much people and so much swag we didn't know where to start. As you probably guessed we only talked to game companies and pretty much ignored all the booths that were announcing game-related courses.


The "Most Arrogant Booth" Award goes to Sega for the second year in a row! Showing up at a fair like this, not accepting CDs of portfolios and telling us to apply at their website is even more ridiculous than not showing up. Enjoy your prize guys, you deserved it.

The "Coolest People To Talk To" Award goes to Streamline Studios, with only two people but really nice ones. They asked everyone if they had heard of their company before and apparently we were the only people that said "Yes". The conversation simply flowed from there. They know a friend of mine that works there and once they realised that they got really informal about the whole deal. We went back to talk to them several times because they were that cool. The runner-ups were Rare, Lionhead and Longtail Studios.

The "Sorely Missed" Award goes to Team 17. After some really good advice from them a year ago I wanted to show them what I had done in the meantime. Well, I'll send them an e-mail or something.

We weren't at the lectures because they were almost the same as last year's.

I recognized a few faces. Some fellow Escapees and Paul Wilkes, some people from the company booths and even the "Be my first animation/modeling job" girl from last year! I guess the cherry t-shirt wasn't enough.



The most curious thing about the fair was probably the Live Action Pong. Yep, two guys dressed as the paddles and a girl dressed as the ball were trying to re-enact that famous game.

After everything started to quiet down we left for a pizza at Leicester Square. We were served by a kind italian guy who absolutely loathes Dr. Pepper and when we left we were surprised the whole city wasn't really expecting. Snow. The kind that melts right when it hits the ground. We still had to walk a bit to get to Piccadilly Circus so it wasn't the most pleasant experience ever but it was fun.

(London, 28-10-2008)